Embrace Your Inner Troublemaker!

Being a troublemaker is not something we necessarily associate with highly sensitive people, those gentle souls who are loath to hurt others.

The label, troublemaker, is not something that we usually generate for ourselves either. It is usually conferred by others when they encounter something uncomfortable in themselves courtesy of another person.

Have you ever been called a troublemaker or treated like one?

Highly Sensitive And A Troublemaker?

Highly sensitive people are usually very conscientious, cautious, perceptive and empathetic.

Highly sensitive people often see what others cannot because they operate from an atypical perceptual reality. When people think differently, many assume that is is an ideological difference that is being expressed. In the case of HSPs, however, what is being expressed is a biological difference.

Highly sensitive people have nervous systems that absorb all the stimulus and energy around them. Their nervous systems are like sponges, which makes them uncomfortable and other people as well. Highly sensitive people notice when someone is uncomfortable, sad or angry no matter how much someone attempts to hide their feelings. They notice when something is not working very well, differences in perception and reality, mistakes of judgment and an other energetic event.

Highly sensitive people necessarily have values that support their sensitive natures including kindness and fairness. They are able to see the pitfalls in a competitive social structure and are unlikely to support the destructive aspects of it.

People who do not understand the highly sensitive nature may feel uncomfortable around HSPs and even think of them as troublemakers.

Characteristics Of Troublemakers

Why would anyone be labeled a troublemaker? Aren’t we all in this together?

The label suggests that there is something to protect against. It suggests that the group is dependent on the existence of certain behaviors, beliefs and ideas to sustain it. It also suggests that we each of us have the job of protecting the group, that protecting the group is one price of membership.

Troublemaker is a social label. Who gets the label?

Troublemaker is a social label. Who gets the label?

people who belong to another social group

people who look different

people with different customs and social habits

Those are just superficial reasons for labeling someone a troublemaker or potential problem.

There are deeper ones:

people who think differently

people with different values

someone kind and empathetic in a culture that is not

someone who notices disconnects

someone who notices that which is overlooked, devalued and deferred

someone who notices imbalances and inequities

someone who notices a need for change

When Awareness Is A Liability

When we are young we take in everything around us. We may not understand it, but we take it in nonetheless. In particular we take in what is supported and what is not. We usually then adopt the supported behaviors and reject unsupported ones. This is how we survive. In fact we have to. When people wonder why prejudice survives this is why: each generation learns the accepted attitudes of their social group and rejects the unaccepted ones including the prejudices towards different kinds of people.

For highly sensitive people, the situation is not so easy. Our perceptual system is different so we cannot help but think and feel differently. We will also notice that our perceptions are often not supported and that will leave us with a quandary about what to do and think. It may increase self-doubt, cause depression and leave us feeling lonely. We will feel our conflict with our social group and not know what to do:

Do we speak our truth?

Do we say nothing when we know something is wrong?

How can we live in our authenticity when we are so at odds with others around us?

When we go along with the group we may compromise our integrity. When we live our truth we may be labeled a troublemaker.

It requires a lot of learning to know when to speak and when not to, how to support healthy change without being alienating, and how to b respectful and also disagree.

These are important challenges for highly sensitive people whose wisdom the world needs and needs to be able to accept. We may be labeled troublemakers sometimes but we are far from it.

Pondering on it, I’ve had one of those A-Ha! moments … I’ve done this in at least two groups, the first being my birth family: I could see where things were going wrong and I had no idea how to tell people, but I felt it had to be pointed out. And I ended up making such a mess of things, not knowing how to approach the task in a respectful and open way, that they were able to make a lot of noise about the troublemaker I was, and I made myself effectively into the scapegoat.

No wonder I don’t want to join any groups for the foreseeable future! This is called living and learning, I believe. But calling someone a troublemaker is often a quick and easy way of dismissing them, rather than stop and think about what they’re saying.

Annys, how did you guess? It is very hard to be aware and know what to do with it. Many people will make you the scapegoat if you do not go along with their belief system. Unfortunately that is one of the reasons we HSPs have social challenges.

It helps if you accept that many relationships will never be deep or close. It is harder when dealing with family because you are expected to go along and be supportive even if you see that someone or several people are on a destructive path. I think you can make some decisions about how you will be supportive and develop some skills at gracious disagreement.

Absolutely! I’m very slowly learning to accept my family as they are. A few years ago I was rash enough to suggest that two of them were sensitive, and I haven’t seen them since. Being supportive is a tricky one, but the principal issue right now is helping myself heal – with the aid of all the information and support now available with the internet and of course blogs such as this one – and hopefully during that process being some sort of positive role model for them.

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About HSP Health

HSP Health promotes the health and self development of highly sensitive people. It focuses on the many challenges of being an HSP including the causes and characteristics of high sensitivity, and the identity challenges of being different.